


Where you want to be

by Ellessey



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Forgiveness, Future Fic, Healing, Infidelity, M/M, Realistic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-17 02:02:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8126111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellessey/pseuds/Ellessey
Summary: ‘Koushi doesn't tell him anything. They both get up and go to work in the morning, they come home late and make small talk about their days, and eventually Daichi gets tired of hoping Koushi will make eye contact with him and goes to bed on his own.It didn’t used to be like this. He used to make Koushi happy, he knows he did. He doesn't know why he can't do it anymore. He doesn’t know why Koushi is even still here.’ --Sometimes things fall apart, without anyone knowing how it happened. But sometimes—maybe not all at once, maybe not in quite the same way—all those tiny, broken pieces can be mended into something whole.





	

Their nights didn't used to be like this, the way they are now, with Koushi so far to the other side of the bed that Daichi doesn't know how either of them can still be pretending this is normal.

They used to sleep right in the middle together, Koushi with his leg pressed in between Daichi's, his head tucked under Daichi's chin. Daichi could feel him breathing all night long, would feel him shifting when he woke. Always before Daichi, making little patterns on his chest with the tips of his fingers, until Daichi opened his eyes and took Koushi's hand in his own to bring it to his lips.

Now Koushi stays asleep until Daichi has gotten up and ready for work. Or he stays in bed, anyway, way over on his side, on the other side of the invisible line that Daichi doesn't try to cross over anymore.

He used to, months ago, when Koushi first started coming to bed after Daichi and curling up so far away from him. Daichi would reach out to him and try to bring him closer. Sometimes he'd shift over to Koushi's side and ask him if he was okay, and Koushi would always say yes, of course, he was just tired.

But Daichi was tired, too. He had long days at the office that left him drained and a little empty, but when he got home and saw Koushi he was never too tired to want to pull him into his arms. Koushi never used to be too tired either, until something happened. The thing that Koushi says doesn’t exist. Whatever it was that took their warm, happy nights and made them cold and lonely.

Daichi never asks anymore. Koushi doesn't tell him anything. They both get up and go to work in the morning, they come home late and make small talk about their days, and eventually Daichi gets tired of hoping Koushi will make eye contact with him and goes to bed on his own.

It didn’t used to be like this. He used to make Koushi happy, he knows he did. He doesn't know why he can't do it anymore. He doesn’t know why Koushi is even still here. Honestly he's always a little surprised, every night that he comes home and finds Koushi there, even though he's not really _there._ Every night that he gets home first and hears Koushi quietly letting himself in.

He gets home so late, one night in March, that Koushi has already gone to bed, even though he usually waits until he thinks Daichi is asleep (he never is) before going to bed himself.

When he goes into their bedroom Koushi is sleeping. Not curled into a tight ball at the edge of the bed like he normally is, but sprawled on his back, one arm bent above his head, his shirt lifted slightly so Daichi can see his pale stomach rising and falling gently.

He's so beautiful. He always has been. Since they were both in high school and Daichi was sure he’d found everything he wanted in a pair of warm brown eyes. He still has the same soft hair, soft lips, soft skin. Daichi used to feel high just touching him, euphoric from the sensation of bare, silky skin beneath his palms.

He doesn't touch Koushi like that anymore. He stopped trying after the last time they slept together, two months ago now, or maybe three? Koushi had barely moved the whole time, he'd just lain there under Daichi, and when Daichi had stopped kissing his shoulder and looked up at him, his eyes were open instead of squeezed shut in pleasure like they used to be. Just open. Looking up at the ceiling, like he was waiting for Daichi to be done.

Daichi hadn't even finished, he'd just pulled out of Koushi and gone into the bathroom and cried.

When he came out and tried to talk to him about it, Koushi just brushed him off. _It's nothing Daichi, just a dry patch. I'm so swamped at work and I'd really rather just sleep._

Daichi had asked Koushi to tell him, then, when he was in the mood, and Koushi had nodded and made vague, empty promises. They haven't even been naked together since.

It makes his chest hurt now, looking down at Koushi in their bed that isn't _really_ their bed. Just a bed that they both sleep in. He sits down next to Koushi and studies his face, relaxed in sleep. Lips parted, and that little furrow he gets between his brows smoothed away.

He tries to find answers there, but all he sees is the face he's loved for so long, the one that used to light up when Koushi saw him. He lifts his hand and brushes it, whisper soft, down the side of Koushi's cheek, and Koushi wakes, blinking slowly and looking up at him.

He doesn't push Daichi's hand away, doesn't turn his head, he just blinks again, and Daichi lets his thumb trace his lips. The ones he never kisses anymore.

Koushi still doesn't stop him, so Daichi lets his stupid heart keep calling the shots, and he leans down and brushes his lips over Koushi's. Koushi makes a soft little sound and he kisses back, and Daichi's heart almost beats itself out of his chest.

He gasps, like he's come up to the surface after being trapped underwater, and he kisses Koushi again, as hard as he dares. Koushi lifts his arms, wraps them around Daichi and pulls him closer. He opens his mouth for him and tilts his head, and Daichi almost sobs. He kisses Koushi like it's the only thing standing between himself and death and he knows, he _should_ know, that he shouldn't let himself be so foolish, but Koushi tastes like life and home and joy, and Daichi has missed those things so much.

But just like that, in the moment it takes for those thoughts to flicker through his mind, something shifts. Koushi's hands go stiff on the back of his neck, and then the warm body under him shudders and Daichi draws back to see tears spilling from Koushi's eyes, coursing down the sides of his face into his hair.

“Koushi, Koushi...” He strokes Koushi's face, tries to pull him into his arms, but Koushi shakes his head, curls up on his side with his back to Daichi, and it's like a fist driven straight into his chest. The ache of missing Koushi infinitely magnified by almost having him, just to watch him slip away again.  “Please, Koushi. God, please...I can’t...I can't keep doing this.”

Koushi says nothing, just crosses his arms tightly over his chest.

“Why won't you talk to me?”

“It was just...a long day, Daichi. I'm fine.”

“No you're _not._ You're _not._ Koushi, _please._ Please, I don't want to pretend anymore. I've been so afraid of making you pull further away if I pushed you, but you're already _gone._ I've lost you and I don't...” Daichi chokes on a sob and realizes tears are dripping from his chin. “I don't understand,” he says, forcing the words out even though his voice is breaking. “I don't...I don't know what I did.”

“Nothing, Daichi. You didn't do anything.” Koushi's voice is soft instead of empty and crisp, the way it normally is when he blows Daichi off, but he's still not telling the truth. Because if Daichi really hadn't done anything wrong then Koushi would be in his arms right now, and Daichi wouldn't feel like the ground has been ripped out from under his feet.

“Then what am I supposed to be doing?” he asks, even though Koushi still won't look at him. “What am I missing? Why can't...why can't you love me anymore?”

He hates himself for saying this, for crying so hard when he does it. He hates the way it makes Koushi's shoulders shake, because if Koushi fell out of love with him then that's all there is to it, really. There's no point in begging him, no point in trying to make him feel bad for what's happened to Daichi's heart without Koushi filling it.

Koushi is crying hard now, too, his whole body shaking, and Daichi doesn't know what to do. Should he touch him? Leave him alone? He stands up and Koushi says his name, calls it out sharply even as he presses his face into his pillow.

“You didn't do anything,” he says, his words muffled and distant now. “But I can't do this anymore, either. We're done. We just need to be done.”

“No,” Daichi says, without even deciding to. The word just flies out of him because this being over, really over, is an impossibility. His body rebels against it. “No, Koushi. No.”

“Please, Daichi...just—”

“ _No,”_ Daichi says. “I don't _understand._ If you're going to leave me then tell me why. Tell me what happened, tell me what I _did_ to—”

“You didn't do anything!” Koushi shouts, finally sitting up and turning to face Daichi, clutching the covers inside white knuckled fists. “It was _me._ I fucked everything up, Daichi, I...”

“You what?” Daichi asks, and the longer Koushi stares back at him with big, frightened eyes and a trembling lip, the more afraid he becomes that this isn't what he thought it was. It isn't some mistake he didn't know he made. It isn't Koushi just drifting away because now they're twenty-eight and maybe something that good just couldn't last. It's _something._ An actual something. “ _What,_ Koushi? Why are—”

“I cheated on you!”

Koushi looks horrified at himself for saying it. He slaps his hand over his mouth right after, eyes shining with tears.

Daichi is numb.

“No...” he says slowly. He wants to wake up. He wants Koushi to laugh and say _no, of course not,_ but Koushi doesn’t laugh anymore, not with him. He just keeps crying and shaking, and Daichi feels himself go cold.

“I did, Daichi. I did.”

Daichi is shaking his head, but he doesn't know why. Obviously it has to be true, or Koushi wouldn't be saying it. Everything that's fallen apart would still be in one piece.

“No,” he says again. Not because he doesn’t believe it, though he scarcely can, but because he doesn’t want to.

“Stop it,” Koushi spits. “Stop looking at me like you think I’m better than that. I’m not! I cheated and I lied and I knew what I was doing, I _knew_ what it would do to you, and I—”

“Stop,” Daichi says, stumbling back from the bed. He hates that he wants to get away from Koushi, hates that he doesn’t like who he sees in front of him. Someone angry and foreign in the place of the man who gave him his first kiss on the morning of his sixteenth birthday.

His skin is tight and uncomfortable and he doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t have any way to handle what Koushi’s saying, or how it’s filling his head with a furious buzzing that’s making it hard to even think. “Just stop...just...”

“I flirted with him, because I was bored and angry and tired, and it felt good.”

“Koushi—”

“He kissed me, and I didn’t stop him, I didn’t even want to.”

Daichi had no idea, no idea that he could hurt so much more than he already did just from Koushi’s silence.

“He asked me to go down on him and I did it, Daichi. And maybe I would have let him fuck me, too, but we got caught and he went to another firm.”

Daichi doesn't know how he's still standing.

Koushi is white-lipped and fierce and tear streaked, and Daichi thinks that maybe he hates him. He turns and walks out of the room, because he won’t cry in front of him again, not like this. Not when he’s afraid he’ll never stop.

He makes it all the way to the front door, but he can’t get himself to open it. He just hits it, again, and again, banging his fist against it until the side of his hand is red and aching, and he sinks to the floor, pressing his mouth to his arm so Koushi won’t hear him crying.

He didn’t used to keep anything from Koushi. He never thought a time would come when Koushi didn’t want what he had to give.

It didn’t used to be like this.

* * *

Koushi has spent a lot of time—days, weeks, months now, he supposes—not feeling much of anything at all. But he feels it now, like clawing hands raking through his chest, shredding him open when he sees Daichi looking at him like the stranger he’s become. The slicing pain reaches his heart when Daichi turns and walks away, and when he disappears out their bedroom door he folds in on himself and cries so hard it’s soundless. Just his body shuddering violently, his teeth clenched so tightly together that the ache in his jaw spreads all the way down his neck and into his shoulders.

He doesn’t know if Daichi is still here, if he’s left. If he’ll ever come back. He doesn’t know how long he lies there in a shivering ball, or when it was that he dragged Daichi’s pillow over and curled around it, staining it with tears.

He didn’t know his heart had stopped until Daichi walks back in and it starts beating again. Koushi sits up quickly, scooting himself back against the headboard and wrapping his arms tight around his raised knees, unconsciously trying to take up as little space as possible.

Daichi’s eyes are red-rimmed and they only focus on Koushi for a second before flicking away. He looks at the window, at the floor, at his hands folded and trembling slightly in his lap when he sits down on the edge of the bed.

“Why?” he asks.

“Daichi...”

“You said you were angry, but you’ve never seemed angry here, until tonight. You’ve just been...”

“Tired?” Koushi says. That’s not quite the right word, it’s so much more all encompassing than being tired, but he doesn’t know how else to explain it. “I’ve been...I was so tired of never seeing you, and tired of pretending I didn’t hate my job when I did, and tired...” Koushi hiccups and brushes angrily at his eyes. “...of you not noticing how much I hated everything, because you were too busy hating your job, too.”

That's not fair. Daichi always noticed, he _always_ noticed when Koushi was off, always asked him why. But he never noticed how badly Koushi needed him to push him into not lying about being fine. He was too good, he trusted Koushi too much, and Koushi started to hate him for it. Not really _him_...he hated himself. He hates himself. He doesn't know how hate ever became such a big part of his life, but it almost feels like a friend now.

“I don't hate my job,” Daichi says without looking up. “I just hate that it's all I do. Why didn't...why didn’t you tell me, that you hate yours?”

Koushi shrugs, hugging his legs a little tighter. If they start to talk about his job, they’ll have to talk about Akio, too.

“You were proud of me, and my parents were proud of me, and I...I felt like I had to do it, after all those years in college. But I didn't really belong there. I don't belong there. I think I wanted...when he started working there...the guy...I think I wanted to let him get me in trouble. I wanted them to see I wasn't good enough and get rid of me.”

“When....when was this?”

Koushi closes his eyes. He’s been letting this fester in him for so long. Letting Daichi sleep in the same bed as him when he didn’t deserve to be in the same room as Daichi.

“January,” he whispers.

Daichi finally looks at him then, eyes narrowed in thought. Koushi can see him putting it together.

“That's when you stopped sleeping with me.”

Koushi feels his chin trembling and he ducks his head to press it into his knees. He remembers that night, the last night he'd had Daichi inside him. It was the day everything happened with Akio. The kiss in the empty file room, Akio with his hands in Koushi's hair, asking him what else he could do with that clever mouth of his.

Koushi had felt foolishly powerful even when he was on his knees, because he knew he shouldn't have been doing it. He was defying his parents who'd never known what he wanted, Daichi who would never want him if he knew how hard it was for Koushi to keep pretending to be anything like the man he loved.

He was so tired and it was so easy to just open his mouth and be exactly what he was—empty. Something to be filled.

That was when he knew he had nothing left. Nothing to give Daichi. No right to take anything from him when he'd only end up hollow again after.

He'd heard Daichi crying in the bathroom when he'd given up and left Koushi empty and numb. Little muffled gasps that should have hurt Koushi, because it wasn't Daichi's fault that Koushi didn't know how to love him anymore.

He _wants_ to. He thinks maybe, behind the thick web of detachment that has built up around him, it's still there, the way he used to feel. He does remember what it was like, when he felt warm and full just because Daichi had smiled at him. He remembers being so out of his mind happy because Daichi loved him, too, but he can't for the life of him figure out how to feel like that again, when all he's wanted to do for so many months now is just _sleep._ And it's so scary, it's so scary to hate who you are, and so terrible to be that awful person with the person you’re supposed to love, because you don't have enough good in you to set them free.

“Daichi...I don’t...I don't know how to explain it to you. I don't have anything to give you, I just...I’m _nothing._ I have nothing and you don't deserve any of this. I don't know why you're still here.”

“Because _you're_ here.”

“No, I’m not,” Koushi says, and he's crying again and he doesn't know why, because he hasn't cried in so long. Not since the first night Daichi got into bed and didn't try to bridge the gap Koushi left between them.

“I don't know...I don’t know what to do,” Daichi says, shaking his head.

“You can go,” Koushi tells him, willing the tremor in his voice to go away so he can sound firm and certain, the way he should have months ago, when he should have sent Daichi away before he had a chance to hurt him like this. “You're not obligated to me anymore.”

“I was never _obligated_ to you. I _chose_ you. I've chosen you every day for the past twelve years, Koushi, and I'm—”

“I'm not that _guy_ anymore, Daichi. I lost him, he's gone. He was so happy and stupid and confident, and I’m—” He can’t fucking stop crying. He drops his head to his arms and sobs, curling in on himself further when he feels the bed shift and Daichi sits right next to him, folds him up in his arms.

“What happened?” he asks. “Before the...before the guy. You...how did you ever end up there?”

“I don’t know...I don’t know...Daichi, I...I can’t fix it. I thought if I worked ha-harder, I’d at least...feel good about myself at w-work, but I _hate_ it. I’m always worried and someone’s always ready to step ahead of me, and the more time I put in, the less time I had with you and I...I started being so angry at you for letting me...for not..for...”

He doesn’t even know. There’s no way to explain something he doesn’t understand himself. There’s just this build up of insecurity and frustration covered over by so much ambivalence, because the only way to stop killing himself trying to keep it together, was to stop letting himself care if he broke.

He doesn't know why it started being so hard. Why it used to be almost fun, when he was still in law school and Daichi would sit up with him at night while he studied, quizzing him and reheating his tea and kissing him just because. It was even okay when he started practicing, for a while, but then Daichi got busier and busier at the paper, and he wasn't always there when Koushi came in feeling like less of a person and more of a machine, and needing someone, his someone, to make him feel warm again.

He doesn't know exactly when it was that he stopped seeking Daichi out and started hiding from him instead, so he wouldn't see what had happened in his absence.

“Please...please just leave. I’m not...it’s making it worse, you seeing me like this.”

“I'm not leaving you,” Daichi says.

“I _cheated_ on you.” Koushi tries to shout it, but it comes out as a broken cry instead.

Daichi lets go of him but he doesn't walk away this time. “I'm not leaving you, Koushi. Not unless you start feeling better and you still tell me to go.”

Koushi can't cry anymore. He feels like the husk of a plant, gone dry and brittle in the sun.

“I don't know how,” he says.

He means he doesn't know how to ever feel better, but it might as well be the other thing, too. He doesn't know how he could actually watch Daichi leave and never come back. He doesn't know how to love him now, but he knows how much he did. He remembers soft morning kisses the moment Daichi was awake, laughing till they cried over stupid doodles drawn over their notes, making love in the middle of the afternoon because they both had a day off and there was no better way to spend it.

“Let me help you,” Daichi says.

“You don't know how.”

Daichi shrugs. “Let me help you,” he says again.

Koushi shouldn't say yes. He has nothing for Daichi. He betrayed him and hurt him and doesn't deserve his help, even if there were anything he could do.

“Okay,” he says. His voice is so small, because it doesn't have any right to leave him and agree to this. He almost hopes Daichi didn’t hear it, but Daichi nods and starts to reach for Koushi before letting his hand drop between them.

“We’ll talk more in the morning.”

Koushi nods and watches Daichi get to his feet and lean over to take his pillow.

Koushi should tell him it's wet, but he doesn’t.

Daichi says goodnight and Koushi can't say anything. He listens to the rustle and shift of a body against fabric, and imagines Daichi stretching out on their couch, closing his eyes with actual walls between them instead of just the space Koushi forced upon them.

Daichi wants to help him, but he doesn't want to be in the same room as him.

Koushi doesn't know when he goes from crying to sleeping, he just knows he's never felt more alone than he does in this bed that was theirs and is now only his.

* * *

His pillow smells like Koushi. It hasn’t smelled like anything but traces of his own shampoo in so long. There are wide, wet patches on it and Daichi presses his cheek to them and waits for the night to pass.

He makes coffee for himself when the sky starts to lighten, and boils water for Koushi's tea. He gets it all ready, with honey and a splash of milk, and then he thinks of Koushi on his knees for someone else and pours it down the drain, dropping the thick ceramic mug and letting it clatter to the bottom of the sink.  

It's Saturday, but he could go to the office anyway, he’s done it often enough. Instead, he sits at the table with his coffee and watches it until the steam stops swirling above it.

He hasn't moved, hasn't taken a sip, when Koushi comes out of their room, still in his pajamas and zipping up an oversized sweatshirt on top of them. He looks so small and pale.

“Why did you let me kiss you last night?” Daichi asks once Koushi has sat down across from him. It shouldn’t be the most pressing question, but he does wonder. And if it hadn’t happened, Daichi probably wouldn’t know what he knows now.

Koushi’s hands are tucked inside his too long sleeves, and he twists the material, looking down at it instead of at Daichi. “I think...I forgot, for a minute. I think I was dreaming about you, and then you were there and I forgot I...I shouldn't have kissed you.”

 _You shouldn't have kissed_ him _,_ Daichi wants to say, but just thinking it makes him feel terrible, because as angry as he is with Koushi, he knows things were wrong before that even happened. He knows this is so much more than just Koushi being unfaithful to him.

He has no idea how to deal with this.

They sit silently, Koushi still fiddling with the ends of his sleeves. Daichi looking at his cold coffee. He's not a doctor, he doesn't know anything about mental health, but he knows Koushi isn't healthy.

“Would you talk to someone?” he asks.

“Like who? A shrink?”

“I don't think people call them shrinks anymore.”

“I don't know.”

Daichi doesn’t know if he would either. He doesn’t know what else to suggest though, other than what seems like the most obvious thing.

“Do you want to quit your job?”

“I can’t,” Koushi says, so quickly Daichi knows it’s just a reflex.

“But do you _want_ to?”

“I can’t,” Koushi repeats. “My parents would...they’d...”

“They’d get over it.”

Koushi shakes his head, and then catches the ratty end of his sleeve in his mouth and chews on it. He never used to do things like that. Daichi wonders how he didn’t see how far this went beyond Koushi not wanting him.

“If I quit my job, I would have nothing,” Koushi says finally.

Daichi’s instinct is to say that of course that isn’t true, Koushi has him. But maybe _that’s_ not entirely true anymore. Not to Koushi, anyway.

“You said last night that you have nothing already,” he says.

“But at least I can support myself.”

Daichi doesn’t know how to respond to that. They’ve lived together since they were eighteen, and everything has always been shared, all the chores and the bills. After college they got a joint savings account and have always put whatever extra they could in it together. It’s not his, it’s not Koushi’s, it’s theirs.

“You could let me support you for a while.”

“I couldn’t,” Koushi says. “Daichi, if I take anything else from you I’ll....I can’t.”

“Fine, then use our savings. We haven’t taken a vacation in what, three years? There’s plenty there.”

“That’s not...it’s not mine.”

“Koushi, come on.” Daichi feels himself scowling and he pushes himself back from the table. “This is stupid. Who cares? It doesn’t matter. Forget about the money. Do you really want to stay at this job? Really?”

Koushi looks at him wordlessly, his sleeve still caught between his teeth. He looks impossibly young. Not like the successful young lawyer the rest of the world knows him as. Just a frightened boy who doesn’t know what he wants.

“Koushi...”

“No,” Koushi says, and then his eyes fill with tears. “I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to.”

“Okay,” Daichi says. “Okay.”

Koushi sniffles quietly and Daichi stands up and gets the dropped mug out of the sink. He washes it while he boils a kettle full of fresh water, and then makes Koushi’s tea again.

Koushi wipes his nose on his sleeve when Daichi sets the drink in front of him. “Thank you,” he says softly.

Daichi sits down silently. He thinks about Koushi and the man from work. About the flirting and what came after.

“Did you love him?” he asks.

Koushi has lifted his mug to his lips, but he looks up at Daichi and then sets it back down. “No,” he says. “He wasn’t even very nice.”

Maybe that should make Daichi feel better, but it just makes his chest ache. For himself, for Koushi. 

“Do you love me?”

His heart is in his throat while he waits for Koushi’s answer. He shouldn’t have asked this.

Koushi licks his dry lips and brushes away a new tear. “Daichi...I don’t know.”

How many times can a heart break? How many fault lines can open up before the whole thing just splinters into something unusable?

“This is why...this is why I shouldn’t let you stay with me. I can’t...I don’t know how to feel anything I’m supposed to. I’m sorry...I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I’m so fucked up.”

Daichi feels like a monster for sitting here dry-eyed while Koushi crumbles in front of him and cries into his stupid, gross sweater. Maybe he’s fucked up, too, because even watching Koushi hurting doesn’t move him enough to get up and hold him.

Koushi left him all alone, and he’s so fucking far away now that Daichi doesn’t have a clue how to try to bring him back.

“Daichi...I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

He realizes now that Koushi didn’t even say this last night. He didn’t apologize, and Daichi didn’t forgive him, but he’s apologizing now. Still. Over and over into the damp sleeve of his sweater, arms around his knees and shaking like he’s freezing cold.

Daichi goes into the living room and retrieves the blanket he didn’t manage to fall asleep under. He takes it to Koushi and wraps it around his thin shoulders, then he sits beside him and wraps his arm around them, too.

“You don’t have to apologize for not loving me,” he says, and Koushi shakes his head almost violently.

“I _do_ love you,” he says. “I just don’t...I don't know how to get it back.”

This doesn't make any sense to Daichi. Nothing makes sense, but this especially. “I don't understand.” 

Koushi looks up at him helplessly. “Everything’s messed up,” he says.

It’s the biggest understatement Daichi’s ever heard. Messed up doesn’t begin to cover what’s become of them. There's so much that he doesn't even know how to begin to deal with, but Koushi said he would let Daichi help him, and he's going to. He's not going to let Koushi keep looking this lost if there's any way to help him get to where he wants to be.

“I think you should quit your job,” he says. “And I think you should talk to someone. I’ll help you however I can.”

“Why?” Koushi asks. “Don't you hate me?”

Daichi laughs dryly. This would probably be so much easier if he did. Every little thing wouldn't hurt so much. He thought last night that maybe he did, maybe he could, but that was before he heard everything and realized there is no black and white here. It's just miles and miles of murky grey, with Koushi wandering somewhere in the middle of it.

"No," he says. “I’m not...happy. But I love you, Koushi.”

Even with everything he’s feeling now, nothing can change that. He always thought that was the case, and now he knows it's true.

“I’m sorry,” Koushi says again. “I’m sorry.”

Daichi pulls him into his chest and holds him. Koushi can't say _I love you,_ and Daichi can't say _I forgive you,_ but this is the most they've touched each other in months, and that has to count for something. If this one little thing can be better than it has been, then maybe, somehow, they can fix some of the other things too.

* * *

Koushi feels like a puzzle. One with some pieces missing, and some that don't fit at all, and the top of the box gone too, so no one really knows quite where anything is supposed to go.

Daichi has always been good at puzzles though. They used to work on them together on rainy days and lazy evenings. Koushi would always get bored long before Daichi did, and he would run his fingers up and down the middle of Daichi's broad back while Daichi ignored him entirely, intently focused on finding the specific blue piece of sky he needed out of two hundred pieces of blue sky. Eventually Koushi would lean in to press kisses to Daichi's neck, to suck that sensitive spot right where it meets his shoulder, and Daichi would lean back and let Koushi crawl into his lap. They made love right on top of a world map puzzle once, and they'd giggled hysterically after because they could now say they'd fucked in every country on earth.

If putting himself back together was Koushi's responsibility alone, he wouldn't have a hope.

Daichi is here, though, like he said he would be. Koushi doesn't know what exactly they are, because while they still live together, they’re not _together_. Daichi never tries to kiss Koushi, and he’s never moved his pillow and blanket back from the couch. But he's here. Quiet and supportive. Just the way he was when he held Koushi’s hand while he called his parents and told them he was leaving the law firm. When he sat beside Koushi on the train on the way to his first therapy appointment. And his second, and his third.

They're quiet together, more often than not. Near each other, but not touching, not always talking, and it makes Koushi sad because they used to be so alive together. But when his heart aches like that, looking at Daichi across the room and remembering how easy it used to be to make him smile, it makes him feel like a person instead of shell, and he likes that.

“Am I a masochist?” he asks his therapist after he's tried to explain this to her.

“You're a human,” she tells him. “Feels kind of good, doesn't it?”

Koushi laughs then, and it startles him so much that he starts to cry right after, because he used to laugh all the time, and what the fuck has happened to him?

“This will take time, Sugawara-san,” she reminds him. “You didn't start feeling unhappy all at once, did you?”

Koushi knows he didn't. It was like stepping into thick mud that clung to his feet and pulled him under by tiny degrees. So small he spent a lot of time thinking he could step out of it if he really tried, until he realized he was so deep, so drained, that he had no will left to make the effort.

If Koushi is a puzzle, then he is made up of as many pieces as all those little increments it took to take him apart. He doesn't know how long it will be before he is more expanses of perfectly matched pieces than empty spaces. He doesn't know what he’ll look like when he starts to take shape.

* * *

The changes are slow, but Daichi can see them.

They're small. Tiny little things that someone else might not notice. He’s heard Koushi humming in the shower, just for a moment here and there. Little snatches of melody rising over the spray of water. And last week, when they were walking to the train station for Koushi's appointment, a little girl raced past them—screeching with laughter, arms outstretched towards a yellow butterfly that soared far beyond her reach—and Koushi smiled with his whole face, his eyes warm and his cheeks looking rounder and healthier than Daichi has seen them since Koushi became an attorney.

He's not an attorney now. He really did quit, and for the first few weeks he was so miserable, so alternately angry and hopeless, that Daichi was afraid he'd made the worst possible call in encouraging him to leave the firm.

That was months ago though, and now Koushi is working again. Not at a law office, but at an art studio. A funky little place, not too far from their apartment, that they used to stop by sometimes when they were walking around after getting dinner.

“Such a waste of my education,” he'd said wryly, when he came home from his first day with paint on his hands, and a light in his eyes that Daichi doesn't think he even realized was there.

He sees it quite a bit now. Maybe not as bright as it used to be, but it _is_ there. Warm and irresistible, drawing Daichi in like it always has.

He gets home from work right on time these days, whenever he can help it. Sometimes he's late on his articles. Maybe he’ll eventually get fired. He doesn't really care.

He and Koushi eat dinner together almost every night, and when Koushi tells him about his day it's not perfunctory, not dry and void of a connection to the things he’s saying. He frowns and smiles and moves his hands, and one day he knocks his glass of juice over by accident and they both laugh so hard that Daichi almost gets scared because it feels so good, and he doesn't know how long this will last.

He trusts that Koushi is getting better, he knows he is.

But he and Koushi...he doesn't know what they are. He thinks they're friends again, but he's never tried to sleep in Koushi’s bed since the night he left it. He never even thinks of it as _their_ bed anymore. He tries not to touch Koushi unless he touches him first. He _does_ , though, sometimes. More and more often as spring slips into summer, and Koushi seems to bloom like the little rows of flowers he planted in their window boxes. Just little touches that probably don't mean much. A hand on his shoulder to catch his attention before it's lifted away, stretched up to the sky to point to the kite he wants Daichi to see. Sometimes he slips his hand into Daichi's, when they're walking home from a late dinner, or watching a movie after work. Nothing earth shattering, nothing that tells him Koushi wants him the way he used to.

Daichi wants to ask him again, if he loves him anymore. But if the answer is _no_ now, he knows he has no reason to stay, even if Koushi hasn’t told him to go.

Koushi isn't broken anymore. He's different, more subdued and hesitant than he ever was before, but Daichi has watched his shoulders getting straighter, his hands resting relaxed on his knees instead of twisted together, and he knows he's going to be okay. He's so glad, so, so proud of him, but he doesn't know what it means. He doesn't know if this version of Koushi will ever feel the same way for him as the old one did.

He just knows he still loves Koushi. He knows he forgives him even though he's never told him that he has.

He worries that maybe Koushi can’t forgive him for ever letting this happen.

* * *

Koushi wakes up early on a Saturday and listens to the traffic picking up in the street below his window. It's July and his room is already warm. If he went out into the living room, he knows he'd see Daichi sprawled out on the couch with his blanket kicked to the floor. Maybe his shirt, too, tugged off sometime in the night.

He wants to go and see, but he shouldn't. Daichi never touches him anymore, not like that. It's been more than half a year now, since they were together last. Almost five months since the last time they kissed, when Koushi thought he was in a dream for a moment, until he remembered his reality, who he was and how little he deserved to have Daichi’s lips on his own.

He wants to taste Daichi again, but he doesn't know how to ask him. He doesn't think he has the right.

He misses him though. God, he misses him so much. He's always here, but he's polite and gentle and friendly, and Koushi wants to grab him and make him remember that they used to have so much more, before he lost his grip on it and it slipped away from them both.

When he finally gets out of bed and leaves his room, Daichi is awake, making coffee in the kitchen in just his boxers.

“Morning,” Koushi says.

Daichi startles and turns around, so Koushi is faced with his broad, bare chest, the dark line of hair trailing into his underwear. Koushi knows just what it feels like under his fingertips, he knows the way Daichi shivers when he gets low enough.

They both know the last man he went down on wasn't Daichi.

“I’m sorry,” Daichi says. “I thought you'd sleep in today. I can—”

“It's fine, Daichi,” Koushi says, cutting him off. “Not the worst way to start my morning.”

Daichi blushes and looks down, turning back to the filter he was fitting into the coffeemaker.

“Hey, Koushi,” he says a few minutes later, when Koushi has his head in the pantry, trying to find the box of chocolate cereal he knows is in here somewhere.

“Yeah?” he asks, leaning back so he can see Daichi.

“Would you want...would you want to maybe go somewhere for the weekend?”

Koushi steps away from the pantry and closer to Daichi. “Where were you thinking?” (He doesn't care. Daichi was thinking about going somewhere with him. That's all he needs to know.)

“I—I don't know,” Daichi says, smiling a little and pressing a hand to the back of his neck. He's so cute. He always has been, but somehow he seems even more so, now that Koushi feels like he can really see him again. “I just...I thought it would be nice to get out of the city for a couple days and just...and just be.”

“That sounds really nice,” Koushi says. He hasn't been on any kind of vacation in so long. They used to do that all the time. Take off to the mountains or the beach, just because they could. Because it would be just the two of them and a trail to follow, a coastline to mark with their footprints. “This weekend, you mean? Could we go this weekend?” He says it far too eagerly, and he's just about to try to take it back, but Daichi smiles, so wide, so natural and warm and beautiful, and Koushi feels so much hope in his chest suddenly that he wonders if he could just float away if he chose to.

“Yeah,” he says. “Let's go. Let's just go.”

Koushi smiles and almost darts forward to hug Daichi, but he stops himself.

He knows, he knows now, that he does still love Daichi. That it was always there, trapped and shadowed by that darkness he didn't know how to shake. It's his again, his to feel, his to express and share with Daichi the way he spent the best years of his life so far doing.

But Daichi has never asked him again how he feels, and Koushi doesn't want to assume, he _can't_ assume, that Daichi's devotion, and his goodness, and all the quiet love he's shown Koushi over the past months as he's helped him slowly pick the pieces up, are the same thing as him being in love with Koushi.

He knows he may have forfeited that kind of love a long time ago.

“Where should we go?” Daichi asks. “Tell me where you want to be, and I'll take you there.”

 _With you,_ he thinks. _Whatever point in time we’d have to go back to for me to have never made you cry. I want to be there._

He can't though, they can't. They can't go back. But they're _here,_ together still, in whatever capacity of togetherness this is, and Daichi is smiling at him, bright and warm, and Koushi feels very, very awake.

“Our beach,” he says decisively, even though he didn't think the words through at all, they just formed on his tongue and leaped out.

Daichi’s still smiling, softer now, and he nods his head. Yes, of course they should go to their beach. The place where Koushi first asked Daichi out on a starry night, with a fire crackling behind them, and their friends and teammates shouting and laughing and completely oblivious to what was taking place. Where they said they loved each other the following year, and where they snuck away in their third year of high school and made love for the first time in a cheap hotel room, with the ocean roaring outside their window.

“I’ll pack a lunch,” Daichi says.

“I’ll get our things,” Koushi says, and then he turns and hurries into their room before Daichi can tell him he only needs to pack his own. Neither of them say “our” very often anymore, but Koushi has said it twice in the past minute and he really likes the way it sounds.

* * *

Daichi doesn’t know what it means, that he and Koushi are riding the train together with overnight bags and their knees touching, but he’s not going to overthink it. He just wants to be with Koushi, away from jobs and routines and the chipped mug he dropped in the sink. Away from the couch that is his and the bed that is Koushi’s.

They get a room at a little inn right off the coast. Daichi doesn’t know how many beds they need, but when the only vacancy is a room with just one, Koushi just exclaims that they’re lucky they got there before there was nothing left. They drop their things just inside the door and go straight out to the beach. It’s cooler here than it was back in the city, and the air is heavy with salt and moisture and memories.

“Oh my God, it smells so good!” Koushi says. His chin is tipped up, the sun glowing on his face. Daichi gets a lump in his throat and he reaches out and takes Koushi’s hand in his.

He feels like he’s sixteen again. Back when he knew Koushi liked him, but didn’t know how much. He blushes the same way when Koushi turns to him and smiles, follows him without a second thought, the way he always has, when Koushi tightens his fingers around Daichi’s and starts to run. Not away from Daichi, but with him.

They’re breathless and sweaty when they make it to the end of the sandy shoreline, and they drop to the ground, Koushi flopping dramatically onto his back.

“I’m so out of shape,” he says. “I feel like there’s an elephant sitting on my chest.”

“There is,” Daichi says. “He’s just invisible.”

Koushi grins and rolls his head on the sand to face Daichi. “How do you know it’s a he?”

“I can see everything,” he says stupidly, because he loves the way Koushi is looking at him. Once he hears his words in his head though, he feels his own smile fade.

There’s so much he didn’t see. So much he should have.

“Daichi...”

“I’m sorry,” Daichi says. “I’m sorry it took me so long to try to find you.”

Koushi sits up, brushing his hand through the back of his hair to shake out the sand.

“I don’t blame you, Daichi. You didn’t know.”

“How could I not, though? If I’d been there more, if I’d—”

“No,” Koushi says. “Daichi, no. _I_ didn’t even know what was happening. And what did you do, when you realized? When you had every reason to walk away?”

“I _did_ walk away. You were crying and I walked away.”

“Daichi...I’d just broken your heart. And you came back in and you hugged me, and you’ve—”

“I love you,” Daichi says. He hasn’t said it since the day Koushi asked if he hated him, but he’s loved him every day since then, he’s loved him every day he’s known him.

Koushi looks at him with wide brown eyes, he bites his lip, and then it slips from between his teeth as the corners of his mouth lift in a smile. “I love you, too,” he says.

Daichi feels it like a fire in his chest, all the cracks being fused back together by the heat, by Koushi’s clear eyes and his steady voice, his hand firm on Daichi’s arm.

“I think there’s sand in my shorts,” Koushi says, a moment later, and Daichi isn’t sure if he starts laughing or crying first.

He’s so happy, he doesn’t even feel how cold the water is when he scoops Koushi out of the sand and runs into the ocean with him. Koushi screams and Daichi laughs and holds him tight against his chest while the tide splashes over them, washing away the grains of sand, the uncertainty and the hurt, and the sharpest edges of regret. Koushi’s hands are already twisted in the front of his shirt, drawing him closer as Daichi leans in to kiss him. Cold lips that taste like salt and sea, that get warmer and sweeter the longer he kisses him. That start to taste just like Koushi.

“Let’s go back,” Koushi says, shivering when he leans back to look up at Daichi. He doesn’t know if it’s from the cold, or from what’s happening. If his nerves are exploding the way Daichi’s are, every cell rejoicing at having Koushi so close.

“Back home?” he asks.

“No,” Koushi says, shaking water out of his hair and laughing. “To our room.”

Daichi nods and they splash back onto the sand together. They hold hands so tightly on the walk back to the inn that Daichi feels it all the way up his forearm, aching by the time they get to their room.

Koushi kisses him when they get inside, hard and deep at first, and then softer, sucking his lip gently and then just pressing his face to Daichi’s neck. “I love you. Daichi, I love you.”

Daichi tugs his fingers carefully through tangled hair. He kisses Koushi’s forehead. Presses his lips hard against it and just holds him because he can. Because he wants to, and Koushi wants him to. He kisses soft cheeks, and a cold nose, and lips that are lifted to his, that are still whispering _I love you’s._

He undresses Koushi carefully, wet clothes sticking to cold skin, pulled away to reveal all the familiar things that have become new again. The scar above his hipbone where he had his appendix taken out when he was twenty-four. The little cluster of beauty marks across his ribs, three in a row that Daichi used to kiss one at a time. _I. Love. You._

Koushi’s fingers are trembling when he opens Daichi’s shorts and tries to slide them down. They’re so wet that they cling to his legs like they’ve been glued there.

“Your glorious thighs are impeding my progress, Daichi,” Koushi says, and then he laughs and kisses Daichi’s cheeks when they fill with color. Koushi has started teasing him again, over the past month or so, but it still makes his heart soar to hear that lilt in his voice, to see his eyes sparkle and his lips quirk up. To see him looking at Daichi like he’s exactly what he wants.

Eventually they get his shorts off and Daichi kisses him again, walking him slowly backwards to the bed, and sweeping the covers aside so he can press him into the cool, clean sheets. Koushi spreads his legs, wraps them around Daichi’s waist, and Daichi kisses his throat and feels his blood heat up. All those last little places that had frozen over when he realized he was the only one feeling something when he and Koushi made love, thawing and flowing and burning through his veins.

“Daichi,” Koushi says, breathy and achingly familiar, but then his voice catches and his chest shakes under Daichi, and Daichi looks up to see tears just beginning to slip from the corners of his eyes.

 _No,_ Daichi wants to say. _Please, not again._

“Koushi—”

“Are you sure?” Koushi asks. “Are you sure you want me?”

“ _Yes,”_ Daichi says, pressing against Koushi so he can feel how much he’s longing for him. “Koushi, yes, of course I do.”

“But I—” Koushi’s chest shudders again, his cheeks are wet with tears. “I’m not just yours anymore, I’m not—” He hiccups and bites his lip like he wants to stop these words from coming out.

Daichi doesn’t like hearing them either, but he knows Koushi isn’t saying it to be hurtful.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, and he means it. It really doesn’t, not anymore.

It kept him up at night, when he first found out. He made himself crazy picturing it, hating it, trying to get it out of him when his stomach would start to clench and he’d run to the bathroom in the middle of the night, only to find that he couldn’t vomit, he could only sit there on the cold tile and wait for the feeling to fade. But he knows, he knew even then, how much Koushi was struggling when it happened. He knows he wouldn’t have done it before, he knows he wouldn’t do it now.

“I forgive you, Koushi,” he tells him. “I should have told you months ago, but I didn’t want to make you talk about it if you didn’t want to.”

“Daichi, I...I wish it hadn’t happened. I don’t...I don’t know—”

“I know,” Daichi says. “I know. It’s over, Koushi, it’s done, and we’re here now. You’re here with me.”

Koushi nods and sniffles.

“And you _are_ mine, in every way that matters. If you want to be mine, then you’re mine.”

“I do,” Koushi says, nodding and still crying, but starting to smile, too.

“And you love me?” Daichi asks.

“I do,” Koushi says again, and then he smiles wider and Daichi kisses his upturned lips and the swell of his cheeks. He rolls onto his back and Koushi follows him to sit on his hips and cover him with trails of kisses, up his stomach and over his arms, across his chest until he’s pressing kiss after kiss right over his heart. “I love you,” he says. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Daichi laughs and doesn’t bother to brush his tears away. He rolls them back over and kisses Koushi hot and slow as his hands move over him, finding all the spots that make his voice come higher and bring his hands up to twist in Daichi’s hair. He presses as close to him as he can, their fingers woven together and clasped tight beside Koushi’s head when he finally sinks inside him, and the last of the chill from the cold sea water, from the past year, is driven away.

They make love slowly, in the middle of the afternoon, with the ocean crashing beyond their open window. Just like they’ve done so many times, but not quite like this, with their hands never letting go, their need to kiss and taste and breathe each other deep never running out. With neither of them closing their eyes when they lose the ability to form words or names, just watching with hazy eyes as they gasp and tremble and give themselves to each other.

Koushi’s eyes are open, but they’re warm, they’re so, so warm, and they’re focused right on him.

“Again,” he says, when Daichi has stilled inside him and is melting into the heat pressed between them. “I missed you so much, Daichi. I need you again.”

Daichi would give Koushi the world. He would have given every star in the sky just to see him feeling better again. But to see him flushed and alive, wanting more of Daichi, wanting all of him, that’s worth more than he could ever match.

The whole weekend is spent filling each other up. Finding all the empty spaces and flooding them with heat and hope and promises. They’ve never spent so much time _not_ on the beach when they’ve come here. They’ve never made love so many times in a row. Never smiled so much while crying.

“I love you,” he tells Koushi again on Sunday afternoon. Still lying in bed, and not quite ready to get dressed and head back to the city.  

“I know you do,” Koushi says with a sleepy smile.

“I’m sorry I stopped saying it,” Daichi says, and Koushi shakes his head.

“No more apologizing. That’s what you said.”

He did say that. Sometime in the middle of the night when they’d both gotten a little weepy and overtired, and were apologizing for things they’d already apologized for.

“Then I’ll just keep saying I love you,” Daichi says.

“I’ll accept that,” Koushi says with a teasing smile that gets soft a moment after. “And I knew, anyway. You showed me. Every time you made tea for me, and cleaned away the tissues I left everywhere, and listened to me and sat with me and stayed with me. I didn’t know how you loved me, but I knew you did.”

It didn’t feel like enough, those simple little things, but Daichi hadn’t known what else to do. He hadn’t wanted to push Koushi, or to pull him too close to himself when Koushi didn’t know how he felt. He runs his hand slowly up and down Koushi’s pale arm. Not as worryingly thin as it was when there were only days filled with work and nights filled with loneliness.

“When I...before things started getting better, when I...I hated myself so much,” Koushi continues, resting his hand on top of Daichi’s, “you don’t know...you don’t know how much it helped to know that you didn’t.”

“Didn’t?” Daichi asks.

“Hate me.”

“Oh,” Daichi says. “I didn’t hate you. You never deserved to be hated, Koushi. Not by me, and not by yourself.”

Koushi smiles and then his lip starts to wobble. “I feel another apology coming on,” he says. “Please stop me.”

Daichi holds Koushi’s face between his hands—his beautiful face that he has known, and relearned, and loved through it all—and he does. Gladly.

There will be more apologies ahead of them. More mistakes and tears and forgiveness. More hands that need to be held and lips that need to be kissed.

Daichi has been kissing Koushi since they were sixteen years old. He’s nowhere close to being finished.   

* * *

They live in a different place now. One a little closer to work so there’s more time at home in the morning and at night. One with more windows and more light, and more boxes packed with flowers in every color of the rainbow, because Koushi sees no sense in limiting themselves.

He doesn’t always come to bed at the same time as Daichi, like he used to before he lost himself and then found himself again. Sometimes he stays up late in the studio Daichi surprised him with, in the room that could have been an office, but instead is filled with canvases and rolls of paper, drawers packed with tubes of oil paint, with watercolors and charcoal. More often than not though, if he does stay up late, he plies Daichi with kisses until he agrees to get out of bed and sit with him, watching with a quiet smile while Koushi finds ways to turn everything he feels into color and texture and movement.

When they do both make it to bed, they sleep on Koushi’s side together. He got used to sleeping on the edge of the bed and he likes it there. He likes the air and the openness. And he loves having Daichi pressed to his other side, warm and steady and dreaming.

It’s not quite the way it used to be. Not the way they sleep, not who they are, and not the way they love. It’s a second chance, and second chances that are taken and treasured and fostered, can turn what was already there into something stronger and brighter than it ever was before.      

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, and thank you [Essie](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Esselle) for looking over this for me ♡
> 
> ([my tumblr](http://ellessey-writes.tumblr.com/))


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